"Someone just asked me whether, now that Novell's become buddies with Microsoft, I'll be turning away from Novell/SUSE as one of my favorite Linux distributions. My answer is no. I'm sticking with SUSE Linux on both my desktops and servers. Here's why."

Yeah,... and not, more sarcastic. My typical reaction on Gentoo talk. Beside the point, there always were limits what you could do with p'n'c, no matter how many installers you mention. FC6 is the first distro, except ubuntu that went trough my test of complete desktop setup without one single line in terminal.

You see, in the past I was always setting up desktops for my non-techie friends and suddenly that became boring and troublesome (I don't have as much time to spare as I had). This is probably the reason why my brains start making hoops when I see people preaching things like cron as easy.

This is why I started testing this. To be able to predict where Joe User can slip up and limit my help to that places only.

And yeah, it is just as you say. cron, KCron, means shit to Joe User. He doesn't know what cron is, he doesn't know what to look for to install KCron. How would this be easy. Well, if a techie would hold his hand trough install. But, that would kill all reasons for my little experiment.

Lucky me, it's very rare to hear two hardcore Gentoo users talking lately. It seems like those went down the road where dodo and dinosaurs vanished and use precompiled packages now.

It seems like those went down the road where dodo and dinosaurs vanished and use precompiled packages now.

Shouldn't they, though? I mean, seriously, who WANTS to compile packages? Isn't the idea to make computing easier?

I would love to never have to compile anything ever again. Installing Bugzilla was a nightmare - setting up CPAN, modifying the settings, editing the config files, installing all the modules, fighting with some of them. This kind of stuff should just go away in favor of simpler computing.

Sometimes, I think people enjoy making things difficult because it gets you into an imagined elite. But believe me, the goal of computing ought to be to make things EASIER.

Sometimes, I think people enjoy making things difficult because it gets you into an imagined elite. But believe me, the goal of computing ought to be to make things EASIER.

Exactly, this is how Gentoo came to be elitist distro. I was waiting for some uber-Gentoo distro to pop up with moto: "real elite types their kernel from daily printed pages with a help of simple WAP & IR enabled phone directly from svn". Sad side of this idea is that there would still be elitists who would pop on forums and preach how easy job this is.

Shouldn't they, though? I mean, seriously, who WANTS to compile packages? Isn't the idea to make computing easier?

Hmm, well gee I guess developers find it pretty handy to be able to compile packages.

But that isn't the point. You keep making it sound as if SuSE is the only route to an "easy" Linux desktop. With such an attitude you might as well be saying that Linux will never get anywhere because MS pwnz the desktop and you have to do everything via the commandline in Linux. Not true at all.

I'm also not convinced that cron is easy; but for people who don't know KCron on Linux, is the Windows Scheduler any easier? The point is that SuSE Linux is far and away NOT the only "easy" Linux.

Ok, which distro comes with preinstalled KCron? If user doesn't know what cron is how would he know what KCron is? And how does user know that cron is multiuser setup by default and as such doesn't run as that user and as part of users GUI environment?

Windows Sheduler easy? No. It is not. But it is far simpler design and configuration gui comes preinstalled. Beside the fact that all the times I needed it, I got nothing but half assed done job, which can stuck anytime and not run the next day. cron is at least decent in that view.

There's far more "Gentoo users are elite fascist bastards" crapola from Gentoo-haters than there is "non-Gentoo users are lazy know-nothings" or even "G0sh 1'm s0 l33t I c0mp1l3 G3nt00!!!" crapola from Gentoo users. Far more.

You're over reacting here a little bit, but ok, I wasn't very gentle either.

Trouble I was mentioning is that gentoo users tend to preach complicated things for Joe User as simple.
1. typical user doesn't know what compiling is and not even software has to be compiled to be able to run (if it's not some interpreter)
2. typical user doesn't know that something like services exists, way of knowing which service does what
3. typical user thinks movies like hackers are real

Is windows any easier? NO. With Ubuntu I had few friends (talking about Joe User type) who were able to install complete OS without my help. They never had any success with windows. Half of drivers didn't work, etc. Face it, Joe user doesn't know drivers exist.

Since you say you're not a techie, ok, I am. I can speak in C/C++, fart in C#, breath pascal, walk in assembler,... It is now 10 years since I started administering servers. I can put together machine and apart in few minutes. So, what? I still won't say things like cron is easy for everybody.